TSG is updating its annual Payment Gateway Directory, an essential reference tool for intelligence on payment gateways. Last year's Directory looked at 110+ payment gateway providers from large international players, to regional startups; make sure you're included!
Diebold Nixdorf announced that Joe Myers has joined the company as executive vice president, Global Banking. Myers will report directly to CEO Octavio Marquez and will lead the company's Banking business, overseeing sales, related service and solutions delivery and key strategies. He will also serve as a member of the company's senior leadership team. Myers has more than 20 years of experience leading high-performance sales, marketing and business teams to successfully execute plans that drive best-in-class customer advocacy. Most recently, he served as chief revenue officer and president of North America for Atlanta-based Elavon
On the same day a former security chief blew the whistle on what he alleged were “egregious” security failings at Twitter, a lawsuit was filed claiming that another business founded by billionaire Jack Dorsey was also “negligent” in protecting user data. Block Inc., which owns Cash App and Square payments technologies, was sued in a class action on Tuesday related to a December 2021 breach of Cash App Investing, in which 8.2 million users’ data was stolen by an employee who still had access to company reports even after they departed.
After the Federal Reserve issued a long-awaited report on the possibility of its issuing a central bank digital currency, it also asked for input from the public. Card network giant Mastercard, digital pioneer PayPal, mega-processor Fiserv and fintech Stripe are among dozens of companies and organizations that have weighed in, with their comments now publicly available for viewing on the Fed’s web site.
Credit cards are one of the easiest and most common ways to borrow money — but also one of the most expensive. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into just how much banks charge in credit card interest. With inflation surging, consumers have increasingly turned to credit cards to make ends meet, prompting the federal agency, created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, to investigate.
Visa announced that the company has now issued more than 4 billion network tokens worldwide through Visa Token Service (VTS), marking a major milestone in its proprietary offering to help secure digital payments and further accelerate ecommerce innovation and acceptance. This historic milestone, which nearly doubled Visa’s token count in one year, surpasses the number of physical Visa cards in circulation worldwide. This milestone underscores the powerful security that tokens provide to merchants, issuers and consumers alike.
India has lifted business restrictions on American Express, once again permitting the U.S. giant to onboard new customers in the South Asian market after the firm demonstrated “satisfactory compliance” with local data storage rules, the local central bank said Wednesday. In a series of moves last year, the Reserve Bank of India indefinitely barred Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club from issuing new debit, credit or prepaid cards to customers over noncompliance with local data storage rules.
Gift cards are expected to be popular presents this holiday season as 60% of consumers say they will buy the cards to fill a void in product availability created by disruptions to product supply chains, says Fiserv Inc.’s Q3 2022 Gift Card Gauge. Discount stores and big-box retailers will be consumers’ go-to merchants for gift cards, with 42% of respondents saying they will purchase gift cards from those retailers, up from 33% during the same period in 2021.
Google Wallet is now available in South Africa, the first market for this product in Africa, to make it easy for users to save and easily and securely access their payment cards, loyalty cards and boarding passes. Google said that cardholders of partner banks in South Africa that include FirstRand Bank, Discovery Bank, Investec, Standard Bank, ABSA and Nedbank can now add their details on the wallet, and make contactless payments using their Android phones and Wear OS devices.
Revolut's Ukrainian co-founder and CTO Vlad Yatsenko has marked the country's Independence Day in a message to staff, describing it as "heartbreaking" but also "hopeful and symbolic". Yatsenko, who co-founded multi-billion dollar Revolut with Russian-born CEO Nik Storonsky, sent staffers a slack message to mark the day when Ukraine’s parliament vowed to separate from the Soviet Union in 1991. "Tragically, this year the date also marks six months since the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia began," he writes.
Fintech Bitcoin Depot plans to list in the United States by merging with blank check company GSR II Meteora Acquisition Corp in a deal valued at $885 million, the companies said on Thursday. The transaction will raise up to $321 million of cash held in GSRM's trust account and will be used to support Bitcoin Depot's working capital, complete acquisitions and scale its platform and suite of products.
It’s not confirmation of a rumored Amazon acquisition, but Peloton this morning confirmed that it has begun selling select equipment and apparel through the retailer. Starting today, Amazon customers can buy select products, including the Peloton bike, set-top Peloton Guide, clothing and branded accessories like shoes and weights, through the official Peloton store. The move marks a major strategy shift — and, perhaps, concession — for the beleaguered home fitness firm.
Speaking to analysts Tuesday, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette described a by-now familiar situation, where shoppers have grown careful about what they spend on discretionary goods. But there are also some bright spots for the company, he said, including the appeal of its off-price Backstage and Bloomingdale’s Outlet options and evidence that its new “Own Your Style” campaign is boosting the retailer’s reputation for value and style.
Dollar General Corp. reported a strong second quarter with top- and bottom-line growth, and also raised its full-year sales outlook, as it withstood inflation challenges and economic uncertainty. The discounter also updated its plans for real estate projects for fiscal year 2022, citing ongoing delays in permitting and the delay of construction materials related to new store openings.
For years, grocers have been looking for the perfect way to make checkout frictionless because, in case you haven’t heard, consumers don’t love self-checkout (and many have been rooting for its demise). Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology was presented as the next-gen checkout solution when it debuted at a Seattle Amazon Go store in 2018. That’s the same year Shariq Siddiqui—formerly head of product at Amazon, where he led the integration of Alexa to brick-and-mortar retailers—left the e-commerce giant to found smart-cart startup Veeve, essentially a “POS on wheels.”
In October 2021, Visa and Mastercard increased cross-border interchange fees on purchases made by UK consumers to European businesses. Fees increased from 0.2 per cent to 1.15 per cent for debit cards and 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent for credit card transactions. The move has caused uproar in UK parliament and led to a market review by the Payment System Regulator, which says that it has not seen “evidence that shows that there have been significant changes in the costs” for card issuers.
According to Chainalysis, illicit activity falls with the rest of the market. Scam revenues through July 2022 sit at $1.6 billion, 65% lower than where they were at the end of last July, and darknet market revenues are trending 43% lower than last year, the firm said in a recent report. Cryptocurrency transaction volumes this year for both illicit and legitimate entities are tracking behind 2021 through July. However criminal volumes are down 15% year over year, compared to 36% for legitimate volumes.
An old crypto scheme has a new name — and it’s costing investors millions. So-called “pig butchering” is when a scammer builds up trust with their victims before eventually pressuring them to deposit more and more of their crypto assets into bogus digital wallets or websites controlled by the scammer. The name refers to how scammers “feed their victims with promises of romance and riches before cutting them off and taking all their money,” according to an FBI report.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler says the U.S. may have recorded two successive quarters of economic contraction, but it’s “just funny” to describe it as being a recession. “I don’t see anything that resembles a recession. We have record low unemployment, record high vacancies. That looks like a strong economy,” Thaler told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum on Wednesday.
The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.6% annual rate from April through June, the government said Thursday — a slight upgrade from its initial estimate and a sign that this year's drop in growth is less steep than originally feared. Most economists have said they doubt the economy is in, or on the verge of, a recession, noting that hiring remains strong, with low unemployment and ample job openings. Still, inflation is near a four-decade high and is punishing consumers and businesses.
When Suki Lanh was laid off from a fintech insurance startup in early July, she worried it could take months to find a new job. “I was definitely nervous seeing the amount of startups that were laying off folks,” the 30-year-old said. “I just thought generally it was going to be really difficult to get another job for a while.” Ms. Lanh posted a video about her job loss on LinkedIn two days after she was let go amid broader cuts at a New York City-based startup. Recruiter messages started flooding her inbox. “I was honestly surprised at how many places were hiring or looking for someone,” she said.
With real-time payments increasing, many countries must either modernize outdated payments infrastructure or build entirely new real-time payments networks to move money faster. In response, FIS® has launched its new central infrastructure payment solution, RealNet™ Central, to help central banks transform their markets to digital-first, real-time payment economies. Currently, 72 percent of the world’s population has, or will soon have, access to instant payments, according to the 2022 Worldpay from FIS Global Payments Report.
“No matter what the environment, we’re ensuring that our clients have efficient, reliable and easy-to-use digital solutions to navigate their finances today, and to help them plan for tomorrow,” said David Tyrie, Chief Digital Officer and Head of Global Marketing at Bank of America. “Our commitment to and ongoing investment in best-in-class financial technology, along with a culture of innovation, allows us to deliver an integrated and individualized client experience, and solutions that are timely, relevant and secure.”
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, announced its expansion into Argentina with its market-leading eCash payment solution, paysafecard, providing a secure and easy way to pay with cash for online purchases, particularly in the digital entertainment space. The expansion follows Paysafe’s recent acquisitions of Latin America-based payments companies PagoEfectivo and SafetyPay and enables further scale and cross-selling opportunities for the company in this high-growth market.
NMI, a leading full commerce enablement technology company, and IRIS CRM, an NMI company and comprehensive merchant management platform servicing clients in the payments industry, announced updates to its payment gateway boarding integration to consolidate workflows and greatly reduce time to processing for merchants, making it the first and only gateway with this type of instant onboarding.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. in partnership with National Philanthropic Trust and Vanguard Charitable announced Grant Payments, a new product that enables Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) sponsors, community foundations and other grantmakers to deliver grants to charities quickly and electronically via PayPal. Grant Payments will enable charities to receive grants shortly after the funds have been approved by the grantmaker.
Truist Financial Corporation announced that it has acquired key strategic assets from Zaloni™, an award-winning leader in data technology solution delivery. Through this agreement, Truist will acquire the Zaloni Arena platform to accelerate its data governance, metadata management, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) programs.
Riskified Ltd., a fraud management platform enabling frictionless eCommerce, and Aurus, Inc., a unified payments platform, announced a partnership which will enable merchants to effectively manage their payments through all channels and enjoy the protection of a risk management solution with a full chargeback guarantee. Merchants using Aurus now have access to Riskified’s proprietary automated risk-based decisioning solution, which takes on the merchant’s liability for fraud.
Dutchie — the technology platform powering cannabis commerce — announced the launch of Dutchie POS, the company's first self-branded POS software and hardware offering. The new hardware terminal is Dutchie's first physical product, and the launch of Dutchie POS provides retailers an easy-to-use, intuitive, and configurable platform to streamline operations while helping grow their business. Dutchie POS is immediately available to Dutchie's thousands of current and prospective customers across North America.
Nacha’s Phixius service, a trusted peer-to-peer network for efficient and safe exchange and verification of payment-related information, announced that financial institutions and service providers in the Phixius network have utilized the service more than 1 million times so far this year to verify payment-related data. Phixius enables businesses to validate data such as routing and account numbers, and there are plans to support additional data validations later in 2022.
Sky Systemz, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company focused on digital payment and business management solutions, is setting its sights on the transportation industry with a specialization for moving companies. Sky's platform was developed to be an omni-vertical platform applicable for any business. However, over the last six months the company has noticed significant growth in their transportation verticals, specifically moving companies.
